Monday, August 04, 2008

Denver City Council passes DNC anti-obstruction ordinance (the one that bans feces bombs and urine buckets) 12-0

The ordinance banning DNC protesters from possessing bicycle locks, pipes, cement or other items with intent to obstruct and outlawing possession of pee, poo and other bodily wastes, passed without a single dissent (that's why it was 12-0).

Speaking against the bill, Recreate68 co-founder Glenn Spagnuolo used profanity toward council member Doug Linkhart for his "libelous" comments to the New York Post about protesters storing up feces and urine to throw at cops, saying, "The only feces I'm concerned about is the shit coming out of the council member's mouth."

Also speaking against the bill, R68er Tom Mestnick, the group's giant puppet expert, echoed Spagnuolo, and provided a series of (cute) line drawings of other things the council should ban, among them trebuchets, Viking long boats, hot air balloons, pink bunnies and Star Wars memorabilia, nearly shedding tears as he did so.

Jacob Green, from Arcata, CA, while several times thanking the council for welcoming him to Denver (when did they do that?) asked whether, since he was full of "poo," he shouldn't be considered a "poo bomb" himself and banned.

More: but not much more, since I inadvertently deleted all my notes after this point (look ma, I'm a journalist!).

Tent State's Adam Jung asked council members to join his and other protest groups in signing a "doo-doo accord" pledging both sides not to use feces or urine in nefarious ways.

Several city council members (who were amused by neither Spagnuolo's attack on Linkhart nor Jung's doo-doo diplomacy) emphasized how carefully they'd crafted the ordinance, making it even narrower than those of other cities which ban the mere possession of objects without the extra element of intent--ordinances which had passed judicial scrutiny. To its credit they had Public Safety Manager Al LaCabe explain how a cop might discern such intent--the same way, he said, they discern intent when they find a teenager alone in a frequently tagged alley at night with a can of spray paint.

Several also defended Doug Linkhart, who never defended himself on the Urine House rumor, but referred to Glenn as "my good friend." Charlie Brown echoed several in saying that while he didn't think Recreate-68 would be violent, other groups might be, so the bill was not, strictly speaking, against R68, and they wanted to err on the side of safety. He also hilariously worked in a reference to Glenn's house in suburban Highlands Ranch.